I'm a New York-based writer and entrepreneur. Previously, I worked as an editor at Maxim and Popular Mechanics magazines. In addition, I sometimes pop up on cable news and History, Discovery, and National Geographic, and am the cocreator of the iOS fashion app Cloth. As a writer, I'm interested in the tech of culture, and the culture of tech.
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Airbnb's Major New Relaunch Puts Social Discovery Front and Center

Airbnb just got itself a bit of a makeover. The crowdsourced room-rental service—which just booked its 10 millionth guest night—unveiled a massive redesign today. The goal: To transform the search-based service into a browsable, seriously social, and downright beautiful (we’re talking National Geographic-grade travel porn here) travel site. “Airbnb 2.0”, cofounder Joe Gebbia called it on a recent conference call. And with good reason: Seemingly no scrap of code was left unturned with this revamp.

By placing an enormous emphasis on curated lists and its healthy catalogue of aspirational properties, the site also seems intent on upgrading its image from that of a classier version of Couchsurfing (at least in some users’ minds), to a Showcase Showdown-worthy vacation depot.

In other words, Airbnb is trying to transform itself from a tool you use for a planned trip to something you plan your trip around.

But how does the upgraded service stack up? I was given exclusive access to the redesign and its new features prior to today’s launch. I also happen to be a very active Airbnb host, as well as a frequent user of the site for my own travels. Basically: I know this site inside and out, and am in a unique position to review its upgrade.

WISH LISTSBefore today, Airbnb “Wish Lists” were about as basic as bookmarking gets. If you liked a property, you could add it to a list for later retrieval. Certainly a useful tool, but hardly a transcending (or, quite frankly, original) feature.

Now, Wish Lists have been promoted from bookmarking backburner to headliner. This upgrade is more than just an expansion of a feature. Virtually every inch of Airbnb is now built around Wish Lists, which are now designed to be the centerpiece for how users find new properties.

In essence, a Wish List is now a thematic grouping of properties that’s been curated by… somebody. Depending on which tab you click (“My Wish Lists”, “Friends”, or “Airbnb Picks”), that curator could be you, a pal, an Airbnb employee, or even a celebrity.

But what matters isn’t just that Airbnb gives you a bunch of lists of awesome properties—it’s how it shows them to you. From the homepage, scrolling down transforms Airbnb into a vaguely Pinterest-like display of properties and lists. There are also a series of maps of various cities, with the locations of popular properties pinned for easy access. Clicking a pin brings up the property. It’s an obvious and useful tool, and one that should prove very popular.

Of course, the purpose of all this is to solve what has long been Airbnb’s primary weakness: It’s been great if you know exactly where you want to go, but seriously lacking if you only have a vague idea of the what and where of your destination. By emphasizing Wish List browsing over search, Airbnb is trying to make it easy to find a great property, even if you don’t have a location in mind. It also begs you to save properties you love, in the hope that you may one day actually visit them.

The Airbnb-curated lists are, if nothing else, a ton of fun. Airbnb has long had “Collections” based around various locations or themes. But now they’ve seriously stepped up their game, with a emphasis on the aspirational. There are entire collections of Frank Gehry and Frank Lloyd Wright properties (though there are currently only three of these listed), a list of properties featuring infinity pools, ones built from old train cars, or homes on private islands (as Liz Lemon would say: “I want to go to there”). There are also a series of Wish Lists created by celebrities and “tastemakers,” as Airbnb calls them. These include Airbnb investor Ashton Kutcher (“Modern Getaways”), designer Yves Behar (“Designer Retreats”), and Modcloth founder Susan Gregg Koger (“Vintage-Inspired Abodes”).

It should also be said that the new Airbnb is seriously social. They’ve integrated Facebook Open Graph to show you friends’ Wish Lists, and to make it easy to share your own. Privacy settings let users make these lists private, or available to their friends or the general public.

One last point: Airbnb has accumulated what they are calling one of the largest collections of interior photography on the planet, including about a million professional property shots. From an aesthetic perspective, the new site is built around showcasing these photos, which are now bursting from every nook and cranny. “For first time, we’ve been able to surface all this amazing content we’ve been building over the last four years, but has been hidden behind search,” Gebbia says. And I gotta say: Thank goodness. The result looks more like a digital version of Architectural Digest than a traditional travel booking site. Photos are oh so big and beautiful, from the homepage (which is now dominated by enormous property shots) on in. As I said before: This is National Geographic-grade travel porn, and these photos alone should inspire some folks to rack up some frequent flier miles.

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It’s actually not. Even in NYC, which has some of the toughest anti-illegal-hotel laws in the country, Airbnb is legal in most situations. The laws that do exist (at least in NYC) are designed to discourage landlords from evicting longtime tenants in order to turn their apartments into more-profitable hotel-style rental rooms. If you live in your place (as I do in the place that I host), it’s 100% legal in NYC. I don’t know enough about laws in other localities to speak of them in any detail, but I do think the perception that it’s “illegal” is greatly overblown.

Hey Wei-Min: Thanks for reading. Anyway, the law in question (which is the one I was referencing before) does not forbid the use of Airbnb, and in fact protects the right of folks such as myself to rent out our spare bedroom. The law is designed to prevent landlords from emptying buildings and booting tenants in order to make money with transient hotels. Millions of legitimate Airbnb users such as myself (I’m an active host, as I point out in the story) use it to rent out spare bedrooms, which is 100% legal in NYC.

Seth, that law allows you take a boarder on the side whilst you occupy the apartment. If you are temporarily absent when the boarder visits, the boarder cannot pay you any consideration. i.e, no AirBnb.

WRONG Seth. It’s not legal in most situations, do you even know what the majority of rental situations are with AirBnB in New York?

It could be any of the following

1.) Renting out a room of your apartment, or even just a couch to somebody while you still live there

2.) Renting out an entire apartment to somebody while you go away on vacation

3.) Renting your entire apartment out while you live elsewhere to gain considerably more money than you would by renting it to a semi-permanent tenant.

4.) Renting multiple apartments in a building using airBnB

AirBnB is only legal in the first instance. The law states that you cannot rent your apartment for less than 30 days unless you are living in that same apartment whilst the guest is staying with you.

Don’t spread mis-information without knowing the facts first.

People who turn their apartments into hotels take away housing from legitimate people wanting to live and work in NYC. They also destroy communities and pose a security and safety risk to neighbors. Who wants a bunch of strangers constantly coming and going from the house next door, not caring if they make a bit of noise because they are on holiday? Not to mention the risk of bed bugs, hotels in NY already face a huge problem with bug infestations due to the volume of visitors.

Spare bedroom is fine, have a thought for the unfortunate people who live in a condo where other owners after a quick buck turn their apartments into AirBnBs at the expense of their neighbors quality of life.